Email marketing automation in 2015: where do marketers stand?

Whether you’re new to email marketing automation, or you’re still struggling to make it work, rest assured that you’re not the only one. According to the 2015 Email Industry Census, 24% of companies are uncertain where to focus their marketing automation efforts. A good starting point is simply to look at what your peers are doing.

Is marketing automation a priority for marketers?

Yes. In fact, 54% of marketers have indicated marketing automation as an area they are not doing to their satisfaction. When asked what they want to focus on this year, 29% of them chose automated campaigns.

The reason for the interest in marketing automation likely stems from its effectiveness, but also the buzz around it. The proportion of companies that consider themselves to be ‘very’ or ‘quite’ clear on the benefits of marketing automation is an impressive 88%. Additionally, companies see marketing automation capabilities as the most important attribute of a technology provider, after a user-friendly interface.

How successful has implementation been?

The good news is that the proportion of companies rating their automation campaigns as ‘very successful’ has nearly doubled since 2014. We’ve also seen a 20% decrease in companies rating it unsuccessful.

However, the top users of marketing automation only account for 7% of the companies, which shows marketers have a long way to go in understanding how to use it effectively. You can get inspiration from these really successful examples:

Subscription, sign-ups and abandoned baskets are the most common triggers, with abandoned baskets overtaking lapsed customers in the top three compared to last year. However, the examples above show great ROI from using renewal and cross-sell triggers, which are only used by 19%, and 22% of marketers respectively. While setting up these triggers might take a bit more effort, they could yield impressive results if implemented correctly.